'I Want Your Sex': A Wild Film That Fails to Ignite
The new film starring Olivia Wilde, Cooper Hoffman, and Charli XCX explores a BDSM relationship between a provocative artist and her assistant. Despite its stylish aesthetic and interesting questions about the generation gap, the film fails to leave a lasting impact.
At the beginning of the month, the film 'The Invitation' arrived in theaters, in which Olivia Wilde plays Angela — a neurotic and stressed woman, stuck in a shaky marriage and disconnected from her sexuality. Only a few weeks have passed since then, and now Wilde returns to the screen with an almost opposite role: in the new film 'I Want Your Sex' (Hebrew title: 'Boss in Distress'), she steps into the shoes of Erica, a provocative and hyper-sexual artist who manages a BDSM relationship with her personal assistant.
Whoever gave the film the Hebrew name 'Boss in Distress', as if it were a misogynistic comedy from the early 2000s, should undergo a hearing. The original name of the film is 'I Want Your Sex', and it was first screened last January at the Sundance Festival (a stamp of quality, at least apparently), before arriving in theaters over the weekend. Therefore, those who expected a wild film in the masculine and popular sense should know that it is a wild film in the hipster and unconventional sense. Unfortunately, it is also not a particularly amazing film.
'I Want Your Sex', directed by Gregg Araki, opens with a reference to the iconic 'Sunset Boulevard' from 1950 — with an image of Erica's body floating in a pool. But this happens at a later stage of the story. At the beginning, we meet Elliot (Cooper Hoffman from 'Licorice Pizza'), a 23-year-old guy who finished his studies with some invented art degree, and is now looking for a creative way to pay rent. He interviews for a job as a personal assistant to Erica — as mentioned, a provocative artist — and immediately gets the job. But Elliot and Erica's relationship very quickly exceeds the professional realm, as the two begin to have sex, and moreover, BDSM sex in which Erica is the dominant one and Elliot is the submissive one.
Elliot almost forgets about his partner Minerva (Charli XCX, none other than her), who hates him anyway. He is drawn into the stormy and dizzying life that Erica offers him, but the image of the body in the private pool always echoes in the background. The film jumps between the timeline of the past, where Elliot and Erica's connection continues to tighten, and the timeline of the present, where Elliot is interrogated on suspicion of murder. At the end of the film, and as is the best genre tradition, we will discover what really happened there — and the answer is indeed surprising.
'I Want Your Sex' is an amusing film, not one that you laugh out loud at, but one that brings a smile to your face. And speaking of a smile, the (excellent) casting of Hoffman reminds one of a beautiful era when actors looked like real people, with teeth that are not fake and faces that are not injected to the point of lack of expression. This casting is one detail out of many that strengthen the alternative image of the film, such as its colorful and mischievous aesthetics, the young man's addiction in its center to a position of submission and surrender, or the focus on female sexuality that is not necessarily related to romance. All these details hint that 'I Want Your Sex' will be more layered and complex, more sophisticated, than the average sex comedy. But at the level of statement, it does not rise much above its more conservative peers in the genre.
If 'I Want Your Sex' had been framed as a comedy only, if the relationship between Elliot and Erica had been framed as wild but light in its essence, the expectations from it would have been accordingly, and watching it would have been satisfying. But 'I Want Your Sex' also reaches out to the genres of drama and thriller; it presents Elliot as someone who not only enjoys, but actually develops an obsession, a dependency — and Erica as someone who not only experiments with adventures, but as someone who does so because of a mysterious wound that has not healed. The problem is that the film does not answer, and does not even try to answer, these questions that it asks itself. It prepares the ground for psychological insights, but these do not arrive at any stage. It promises another, deeper layer, but when you dig, you discover that it is not there. In fact, the most powerful moment in the film is not a moment of Erica and Elliot at all, but of Apple (Chase Sui Wonders), Elliot's best friend and roommate.
What is interesting is the film's engagement with the generation gap, and the presence of the way each of its protagonists relates to sex and sexuality: the millennial Erica is not ready to acknowledge the limitations set by the 'woke' and 'MeToo' movements, Elliot from Gen Z is depressed by those exact same limitations. In this sense, the film presents a worthy wonder regarding the connection between the cautious discourse on sex and the suppression of desire in an entire generation — and on the other hand, it also checks where the line is drawn, and when the current dry terms are actually very important.
Some critics have already written that 'I Want Your Sex' encourages the younger generation to leave the screens and start having sex. This would have been true if the sex in the film was exciting, but it is more performative and acted than truly hot. And it is not that there is a problem with BDSM: the point is that Erica is never exposed in her nakedness, she does not show vulnerability, and she remains within the role assigned to her — which prevents the relationship between her and Elliot from being truly intriguing. It is funny, because the film itself discusses out loud the difference between lust and eroticism, and in the end, it does not really achieve either of them.
